Stuck in Fictitious Reality
by muggleforachange
Summary: "When Zoe gets stuck in a universe that she's only dreamed about until now, she isn't sure if it's the best or worst thing that could possibly happen to her. And what is this with the love of her life being dragged to the same universe, is her life just a whole big cosmic joke to whoever's messing with her?"
1. Chapter 1

It was your usual morning. The kind of morning where you don't want to get up from your bed, but just lay there and enjoy the warmth of the bed seeping through as you're fully awake and still trying to hold on to the last vestiges of sleep.

This was the kind of morning that she woke up to everyday since she got to this terrible world. The only good thing in this metal fortress were the memory foam beds that Tony had installed.

She checked her phone before she even looked at anything else, noticing once again that there was no signal on either of her networks and her location on Maps was still "Unavailable".

Grumbling about stupid superheroes and their stupid training sessions, she found herself limping to the washroom only to realise she was already late for today's combat training with the Widow herself.

Angry at having missed the opportunity to drown herself in coffee, and enjoy a decent bath to soothe her overworked muscles she stomped her way to the elevator yelling, "J.A.R.V.I.S, what the fuck happened to my alarm? And please get me to the 19th level before Nat shows up with her Widow bites here."

The ever so polite A.I buzzed to life as the elevator doors opened, "Ma'am, last night you very specifically told me not to wake you up and said 'you would shove a pipe down my nasally throat' if I tried to wake you up."

She groaned when she remembered how drunk she'd gotten last night and how things had gotten very out of hand with Jay before she'd rushed back to her cabin to throw up. Ignoring her moan of embarrassment , J.A.R.V.I.S continued, "And it isn't Miss Romanoff who's waiting in the training room, it's Captain Rogers."

That got her attention. By the time she reached level 19, she was eager to get to the training room, face to face with Rogers, training be damned, he was going to give her some answers whether he liked it or not.

If it had been 2 weeks back, she'd have run all the way to ask him about the progress, to beg him for more details on anything that'd indicate that the mission was going accordingly. But she'd learnt now that running around the tower only got her treated like a kid who was just bouncing for answers and not like an equal that they would share valuable information with.

As she strode confidently and turned the last corner, she got a view of the man himself. In his drawstring sweatpants and loose grey t-shirt with bedraggled hair and a coffee in his hand, he looked more like someone who'd been forcefully pushed out of their bed than an enthused trainer set to educate her in battle strategy.

She cleared her throat loudly as she walked in. He smiled at her brightly putting his coffee down near one of the huge mirrors outside of the mat in the training room. She had always felt at home here, in this room, with its wide space and half of the room's walls covered with mirrors.

Nothing else mattered when she trained here, with her mind set on one thing, to figure out this mess that she was in and also be able to protect herself when the time called for it. Focusing entirely on just her body and the moves she'd been learning these past few weeks provided a clarity to her mind that she couldn't really find anywhere else in a building filled with gadgets and gizmos that could probably make the Elon Musk from her world cry like a baby.

"Ah, Zoe. Good morning, you're 12 minutes late. Did you sleep well?" His voice was never judgemental, but always cool and professional when he spoke to anyone he didn't know very well. He opened doors for people walking behind him and said please and thank you so many times it sometimes made her ears hurt, he was a gentleman through and through.

He'd always call women he didn't know quite well as 'Ma'am' and the fact that he'd taken to calling her by her name now, made her wonder if he really deserved the angry lashing she'd had in store for him which combined with the queasiness and pain in her head, that she supposed was from the hangover, was only going to make her scream at him more.

"Cut the bullshit, Rogers. When am I going back home?" She knew this was rude and she was at their stronghold for fucks sake, they could throw her and Jay out if they so much as pleased but waiting around only made her more antsy. His polite morning demeanour disappeared in an instant and with his calm Captain America facade in place, he said,"Get in position, Agent. We're not here to chatter. Arms up. You'll play defense today. Block in whatever manner you can. No offense, you won't be needing wraps and gloves."

She bristled, "I'm not one of your stupid agents," but she raised herself into a defensive stance before Steve launched himself at her. Punches and kicks flew at her, she dodged as Nat had taught her, dropped and rolled to the side, but he kept coming.

She knew he was taking it easy on her, she could see the way he was holding back from hitting her too hard. She probably could have done better if she hadn't been so blinded by her anger. "And I will not be treated like one. You told me 2 weeks ago that there was some progress and the only answers I ever get from you lot is, 'we're figuring it out, kid'," She ducked as a kick almost landed on her right cheek and continued, "But that's it, I've had it, I can't sim-", a punch to her gut cut her short and his breathy "Pay attention, kid" only got her more wound up. "Stop calling me a kid. Stop. I can't do this anymore." And just as she threw down her defense, and before Steve could stop, his body barrelled into her, making her loose her footing and fly back from the force of his attack into a punching bag 2 meters behind.

The moment she landed on the mat on her forearm she heard the sickening crunch of her bone breaking. Before she could even register the pain, he was already pulling her up and apologising a thousand words per minute.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't realise you meant 'can't do this anymore' as the training, I thought you were just sick of everything that's been happening, darn it! I'm sorry, I-" She pulled herself away from his grasp and biting down on the pain from her arm, she let loose everything that had been building up inside her for the past six weeks, "No. NO. I did mean I was sick of everything that's been happening and I am sick of it. I'm done being here in your stupid world, where you treat me like one of your goddamned guinea pigs just because we stumbled from a different fucking universe. And all because your resident witch decided to take a merry fucking subconscious stroll and bring us to a world where we would otherwise have never set foot in. We didn't ask for it, damn it! I don't want to train everyday like my life depends on it."

"Your life does depend -" He tried to interject, to make her see sense, but she was raining down all her anger and misery in one go that she barely even stopped to listen to him. "You tell me that I'm not going to be stuck here for long, then why do I need to learn to defend myself against villains and goons I'd never likely face back in my world?"

She didn't look like she was waiting for an answer but instead of Steve, it was Natasha who gave her an answer as she strode into the room. "I don't believed that the world you come from doesn't have any dangers that you could use some protection from. As far as I've heard, you're not from a Utopian world and that means, you could always be attacked."

"Oh, please Natasha. Spare me your overworked spy brain rantings. I don't care about any of this. I want to go home and I want to see my mother. I want my old life back. And if you really want to be helpful and 'protect' me, just find a way to get me back to my world. I'm sick of your superhero business." And with that she turned her back and before Steve or Natasha could get a word out she marched a few steps out of the training room and crumbled to the ground from the pain shooting up not just from her arm but also from her leg, which she figured she'd probably twisted as she fell during the training session.

Her almost cool exit had turned pathetic and before she started crying from the pain, she felt a pair of warm arms lift her up. Thinking it was either Steve or Nat and she knew she couldn't deal with anymore humiliation, she tried to slap the hands away only to turn around and, "Jay! What even?" She could see Steve in the back looking ready to rush towards her if she looked like she needed any help but she focused solely on Jay as he replied, "I was on my way to train with Widow now, and when I saw you fall down and you didn't get up, I knew you'd finally had that fight with Cap and knew you wouldn't want him carrying you to 's lab to fix you up in case you needed fixing up."

He was looking at her as if asking her to disagree with anything he'd said and when she didn't and just mumbled for him to carry her to the lab, she wondered how she'd thought it was a curse that it was him who'd been dragged into this world with her. With a quick movement and gently not jostling her broken arm, he picked her up in his arms and she threw her good arm around his neck for support. "Hey, Jay?" he looked down at her, "Yeah?"

With pain clouding her mind and slowly dozing off she asked him,"Do you think we'll ever get home?" She only remembered seeing him smile sadly at her and his whispered words of "I hope we do, love. I hope we do." was lost on her as she drifted off.

* * *

 **A/N**

 **So, this was something of a dream turned fanfiction kinda thing which I may never complete. But I do have the entire plot just sitting in my head. So, I may one day just finish it or simply add more chapters. Anyway, I know the characters may not have been depicted properly (cause this is my first time writing anything like this), but I tried! Don't hate. K. Bye.**


	2. Chapter 2

Sure, he was an android, but he was just as fascinated as people were about some things. He was fascinated about the gem on his head, fascinated about humanity, fascinated with Wanda Maximoff. He was also fascinated about this inter-universal girl that had landed on their doorstep.

He'd taken a keen interest on the girl since the moment she had stumbled into the facility dragging what looked like a dead body then. Her eyes were wide, but she hadn't seemed afraid, which was what Vision found weird. Landing smack dab in a universe that was entirely different to what she'd known, she hadn't looked the least bit frightened, instead, she had stared at each and everyone of them for a long time and even politely asked him if she could touch the jewel on his forehead. He was intrigued.

The boy, who only she called as 'Jay', on the other hand, the one she'd dragged along initially, was what Tony Stark would call 'boring'. He'd stuck to the infirmary until his wounds had healed and when allotted a living quarter, he'd stuck to that. He was just, there. He never spoke much unless the girl prodded him or to ask for assistance while training. Barely a few syllables then too.

As they'd interrogated them in the first few days (because Tony was paranoid that they were now sending children as spies to steal his tech) she'd answered for both of them, telling them how she had found herself almost 11 miles from the facility in a 'not so creepy kinda forest' and thought she was going to die when just an hour ago she'd been sleeping in her bed at her home and how her friend had fainted from dehydration half way through the walk in the forest.

It was only after the third day, did she reveal that in the world that she had come from, superheroes didn't exist and that she was worried that all of this had been one big dream. At this point Vision had asked, "Don't you mean a 'nightmare'?" because, this new world and everything about it should have turned her system upside down.

"Are you kidding me? No effing way, I mean, dude, that's Captain America right there. He's interrogating me. And Iron Man is paranoid about me. ME. Some nobody from nowhere. You guys were only fiction in my world, and I could only hope that I'd probably someday meet the actors who play your characters, never the real deal. This is the best thing ever." Almost all of them had raised an eyebrow at the outburst.

With the exception of himself and Captain Rogers, who was caught in a wide eyed stare by the girl.

As the weeks had passed, her sprint to the debriefs and training sessions grew into slow jogs which ended up with the boy having to drag her everywhere. Her longing looks towards Captain Rogers turned furtive and cold and the only time she wasn't outright rude to anyone in her vicinity was when she was sleeping or when she spoke to the boy.

He'd heard about her run-in at the session today, Natasha had filled him in when he had heard the crunch of a bone and phased through the wall of the gym to help. "She's too volatile to be handled," the Widow had said, "She's been cooped up in this place for too long and none of us are any closer to figuring out anything about her appearance and it would do her some good if someone went out with her. Maybe for a movie or a cup of coffee, what do you say, Steve?" Captain Roger's ears had turned red at that, he shifted his weight from one foot to another and mumbled, "I just broke her arm, she wouldn't even want to be anywhere near me and she's a kid, it's not like that, Nat."

Natasha's lips twisted slightly to the right as she held back a smirk, "I know, Steve. Besides it was cute how she followed you around like a lost puppy the first few weeks." She then looked at Vision before saying, "I know you're not the butler anymore, but check on her in an hour or so? I don't think she'd run around with a broken arm, but just make sure she gets some rest."

With that she had turned around and quickly launched a series of blows on Captain Rogers, who turned to what he was known best for, his defense. He only got a glimpse of their training before he left to find Zoe.

That was how he found himself outside of Doctor Banner's lab waiting for her and Jay to come outside, so that he wouldn't interrupt what looked like a very awkward conversation. Bruce, to his credit, stayed far away from the two at a corner in his lab. She was blushing and kept her gaze fixed at one end of the room the entire time Jay spoke.

Vision decided she looked better, at least better enough that she didn't need an android looking out for her through a glass door. As he prepared to leave, he heard the doors open and her voice carried out, "I really am sorry about yesterday, Jay. I didn't mean to do it and Bruce! Thank you." Bruce nodded back while the boy replied with a, "It's fine, just don't go around picking fights with any more Avengers."

"It's remarkable, isn't it?" She turned around startled as he continued, "How the technology Bruce and Tony use heals even bones in minutes? If only the government didn't despise Tony so much, we could be helping millions."

As he'd started speaking she had started walking next to him, her arm all but healed but for the crepe bandage Bruce had probably insisted she wear because just in case. He always was so cautious. She ran a hand through her short hair, slightly tugging at its ends as she replied, "Vis, every government is run by some piece of shit. We can't really do anything about it but do our part in our life and then just shut the fuck up and die." He blinked for a second, "That's remarkably selfish, Zoe. That you only live for yourself and your gain when you're privileged enough to help so many."

They were walking towards the entrance of the facility now and Zoe nodded to a passing guard before she stopped and turned to face him, "Listen, I get it now why you chose Tony's side in Civil War, you're all about that moral bullshit thing. But right now I'm going out, and I don't care if everybody's gonna be pissed about it. So, nice conversation attempt, but boring conversation. Bye."

He phased through her before she made a dash for the door and stood in front of her, blocking her path and told her that she could indeed go out and that Natasha had suggested that she do so, but he'd accompany her, just in case.

"Ah, Vis. Why didn't you say so before? I thought I'd try my hand at knocking you out, man. Also, don't ever phase through me again. It's fucking weird." She grinned as they both left the building. "Finally! I had to get out of that place. After all these years looking up to them, it's funny how I can't stand to be in the same compound as them for more than a few weeks. " she had sighed.

He had stayed quiet at that. Even though her anger was justified, her anger towards everyone on the team wasn't, she knew, just like he did, that everyone had been working hard on figuring out how she got here and how they'd send her back. Maybe a walk around the city would give her a better perspective and a clearer head.

"By the way, Zoe, you mentioned something about a War? More specifically something called Civil War and Tony's side?" When he asked her this, she brought her left palm in contact with her face, in what Clint had called 'the faceplam', while she held a cone of ice cream in her right and said,"I keep forgetting that your last battle was with Ultron and the whole Civil War shindig hasn't happened yet here. I don't know if I should say anymore about this at the moment though, Vis. Doesn't seem right. Maybe that might never happen here."

Her statement about a war had bothered him as they'd walked through the chilly streets of New Jersey and he'd stayed quite with a few hums and nods as she talked most of the way. He had thought that maybe everything that happened in those comics that she talked about wouldn't necessarily occur in this world, but everything until now seemed to have followed the path of what she'd told all of them.

This train of thought had taken his mind off of their surroundings and he was forcibly brought back when a large explosion went off a few hundred metres behind them. They both turned around, and realised too late that it had been a ploy to distract Vision. He found himself flying before he even turned back entirely.

"If you fly even an inch more, there's another bomb in a heavily crowded civilian area which will be set off." It was a deep scratchy voice and for a nanosecond Vision thought that it was Ultron and that he'd somehow risen back from the depths of the internet, but realised the suits of armour holding a wide eyed terrified Zoe aloft, were just empty suits of armour controlled by none other than the ruler of Latveria.

An hour later the Avengers Mansion saw Vision flying back to the facility, urgently calling for the Avengers, his first words drained any colour that was left on Jay's face as he saw Vision stumble in, "He has her. Doom has her."

* * *

 ** _A/N_**

 ** _Hi. The writing's sucky and I know I didn't really give you much in terms of plot. But that's all going to change in the next chapter, which I will write very, very soon. I hope. Our girl's been taken by Doom. But why. Butt why._**  
 ** _We'll also see why she's in the new universe too. Okay, bye._**


End file.
